As much as possible, I'd like some good dialogue about this topic, since it's something we'll see more in the future.

Warning: Spoilers ahead! Read at your own risk!

A couple of days ago, I and my friend Gene were talking about what components of a game’s story make it a compelling rather than a mediocre one. One of the things we talked about is how ‘immersive’ a story is. Now, ‘immersive’ is a pretty vague concept; what is immersive for one person may be completely opposite for another. Some people like a story for a strong plot, some for the likeable and memorable characters, and some play it for both. Having fairly similar preferences in terms of story, we tried to articulate what exactly it was that we liked about the stories of the games we liked. One of the more prominent topics was the idea of choice and open-world mechanics, and how games do not need to have such things, and can be as linear as a 400-foot flagpole, and still be considered good.

The episode deals with the idea of choice in story, and features two brilliant developers with two branching ideas of story: David Jaffe, director of God of War, and Greg Zeschuk, co-founder of Bioware. While the conversation was derailed by some conversation about slapping someone through the Natal, I think that a main point through the entire 13 minutes was how Bioware’s concept of choice in their games made it unique.

This idea of choice has certainly picked up speed over the past few years. Open-world games such as Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto have good gameplay freedom of choice, but the story is still fairly linear. And then we have emerging games such as Heavy Rain, where what happens to the story is whatever the player chooses to happen. And of course, Bioware games have a lot of choice in terms of responses to NPC conversations.

With the emergence of these ‘choose your adventure’ games, the more linear games are more and more openly criticized for their story linearity. Zeschuk, for example, has criticized JRPG’s lack of ‘choice’ and its linearity as the reason for stagnation in an interview. While JRPG’s are criticized because they are in a genre that has evolved over the past few years thanks to some groundbreaking titles from the WRPG side while they have remained formula-stagnant (a claim that's really debatable, though), games such as God of War and Uncharted are also seen in a slightly negative light due to their linearity (both story and gameplay) in the face of open world games such as Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed. So, the question here is: does the presence of story choice automatically make a game better than a game that doesn’t?

My answer is that “it depends on the execution”.

Let’s take Bioware’s Dragon Age Origins. Bioware’s known for having this concept of ‘free choice’ in story, where each time the player talks to non-player characters, he/she is given at least six choices that range from the ‘nice guy’ answer to the ‘total jerk’ answer. It’s supposed to allow the player avatar to answer in a way that one would answer in real life, and it would make the game more “immersive” because the player ‘feels’ like he/she is the main character of the story.

Well, that’s the idea of ‘free choice’ in concept. In practice, it’s really less desirable. Instead of a ‘choose your own story’ concept, Dragon Age’s response system most of the time will consists of five wrong answers (that range from slightly wrong to completely wrong) and one right answer. For example, early in Lothering, the player CAN ignore the NPC’s that give quests for abilities (poison-making, trap making, etc), but he/she WILL lose out on rewards that they offer when taking up such quests. Not to mention that the player will NEED to recruit someone with that particular skill or roll an avatar with the particular set of attributes for that quest. Also, of the six choices on that NPC, four are basically a block of text boxes, one will give the quest, and the last one is to stop the conversation. This might excite people who love lore in RPG’s (or long gauntlets of text boxes punctuated by the weird disconnect between what the person is saying and what his body is doing), but for the rest of us, the answer is to just get the person who can make traps, get the quest, get rewards, get on with the story.

The ‘one right answer’ choice system reaches its ugliest form in conversations with party members and the approval system. Say, for example, the player wants the male avatar to be all lovey-dovey with the snarky kuudere of a magicial girl Morrigan. However, ‘in-character’ responses do not work, and Morrigan disapproves of the avatar rather than approving. The player restarts, goes to GameFAQS, and looks for the set of correct responses in order to woo Morrigan. All of a sudden, the arrogant and high-headed warrior will have to respond in nice, kind and unbecoming quips in order to woo her. This is really disturbing when one combines all the desirable responses in the game: the player avatar will at times need to be a schizophrenic wreck in order to get the most optimal answers in all situations, in order get both 100% completion and the desired pairing in one playthrough (especially if the player really likes picking the ‘total jerk’ choices). This is really detrimental to a game that has a player avatar for a main character, because nothing really ruins the experience worse than having to answer out of character in order to get +7 approval from Morrigan.

Sure, there are other choices, but they’re not the ‘right choice’. When you take it in that context, it doesn’t really matter if there is two, five, or even twenty answers; there is only one series of correct answers to get to the desired outcome, and the other options if you don't pick that outcome aren't as good or rewarding. Regardless of how the player has responded in other situations, he/she HAS to choose that one correct answer in that particular situation, or be punished to varying effects, leading him/her to re-load and pick the correct answer. And the few times when wrong answers do not affect approval ratings or a reward, the result is pretty much cosmetic than dynamic. This isn’t really freedom, but rather a multiple choice test that masquerades as freedom.

Let’s look at the exact opposite of the ‘choice spectrum’, an example being Final Fantasy X. The game is shamelessly linear; there is hardly any ‘choice’ in what the character says or does (though the Sphere Grid opening up later on means that you can essentially play the game in any way you want), the story is on rails, and any sort of exploration only really starts after the player has finished Zanarkand Ruins and Yunalesca. In fact, the only ‘story choice’ I can think of is who throws the Blitzball during Tidus’ Blitz Ace move (affected by certain responses and actions). And yet, in spite of these shortcomings, I consider FFX’s story to be superior to a lot of other games. And a good part of it is actually because of its lack of choice.

For what FFX lacks in story choices for the main character, it makes up for in characterization and character development. Tidus is not a player avatar, and the story emphasizes this greatly (“This is my story”, Tidus frequently says throughout the game). Over the course of the story, Tidus, as a character, slowly develops from a bratty sports jock into a more mature, well-rounded, and caring sports jock. This character progression, as well as Tidus’ personality, is something that player avatars can rarely exhibit, which makes these avatars static as characters. Tidus isn’t unique, though; there are a lot of well-developed and engaging characters in linear games that aren’t player avatars; Nathan Drake from Uncharted is a current-gen example, and Wander from Shadow of the Colossus is a silent protagonist whose wordless actions speak greater volumes than novels worth of dialogue boxes. It’s not about how linear or how much choice you put into a game; it’s how one executes the linearity or non-linearity that makes or breaks a game.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the ‘story-choice’ concept is a bad thing. The ‘execution’ argument makes the case for properly-done story choice systems. Compare Dragon Age’s ‘choice’ mechanic to Bioshock, a game that I think has a fairly good ‘choice’ system with the Little Sisters. The player can choose to kill or save a Little Sister, but there is no ‘right answer’ between the two choices. Sure, the player can get much more ADAM (currency for upgrading active and passive special abilities) much sooner if he/she kills a Little Sister, but if the player saves enough Little Sisters, then he/she gets a special gift from them that also contains ADAM (though quite less) and some special items (which you can buy/invent). Since the game isn’t highly dependent on either the Plasmids (active special abilities) or the special ammunition, and you can compensate for lost ADAM with extra special ammo and vice versa, the player’s free to approach the game from either side, without suffering much from the choice the player did shun.

What Bioshock shows us is that if a game is to implement a ‘choice’ system for its story, then all choices must have some sort of equally favorable (or unfavorable) outcome. As I’ve said previously in Dragon Age, the reason why its story choice system fails isn’t because it’s there, but because out of the choices per conversation, there the one that gives the reward, and the rest are wrong in varying levels of intensity. If a developer’s going to give some illusion of choice to the player, then at least make the game flexible enough to accommodate such choices, instead of punishing them for the kind of free choice that they’re advocating.

Finally, another interesting game when it comes to story choices is Heavy Rain. It’s not a complete translation of the idea of equally favorable outcomes per choices, but it offers what I believe is a close to ideal ‘free choice’ system. It makes each of the player’s choices be a part of the storyline, and weave it into the narrative. Sure, there is still the ‘right choice’ set of answers where the protagonists get the best ending, but since each choice leads to a robust story route, the player is essentially free to choose how the story plays out, even if it isn’t the ideal ending. It’s more than just a list of quips and choices, but the consequences of each choice that can make or break a choice system. Only when the story choice system does not hamper the game experience can it actually work to compliment the game. This, I believe, is true freedom of story choice.

TL;DR version: Adding 'story choice' to a game isn't just about adding the feature, but it's also about making sure the consequence of the choices do not mean that there will be a 'best choice' that the player will be forced to pick for gameplay reasons.

« Last Edit: March 12, 2010, 04:48:35 PM by Keiya »

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The biggest flaw of a Final Fantasy game is the fact that it's a Final Fantasy game.

Seems like a good post, probably should be in either "General Discussions" or possibly "Console RPGs". Miscellaneous games tends to be specific to non-RPG related discussion, which this would be perfectly fine under Console RPGs. Just for future reference.

I'm at work, so I don't have time to read the full thing, I'll check back later.

Seems like a good post, probably should be in either "General Discussions" or possibly "Console RPGs". Miscellaneous games tends to be specific to non-RPG related discussion, which this would be perfectly fine under Console RPGs. Just for future reference.

I'm at work, so I don't have time to read the full thing, I'll check back later.

This isn't just for RPG's, but gaming in General. The idea of 'story choice' is prevalent in more than one genre, if what we've seen so far has been any indication. Here are other example of what I think have good 'story choice'

Army of Two: 40th Day: Any and all the choices you make in the storyline will have dual consequences. For example, for your first 'story choice', the contact you need to kill will die regardless of if you spare him or not. The choice there is whether you do it yourself, or you have someone else kill him for you.

Battle Realms: All of Kenji's Journey. The very first choice will determine whether you'll be using the Dragon Clan or the Serpent Clan, both of whom are strong in their own ways. The rest of the adventure is a set of maps where you can choose which battle to partake in (some have harder difficulty, some have different factions).Whichever set of maps you choose, though, you will still progress the same way in terms of units (both Dragon and Serpent), and the only difference are the Zen Masters you will encounter on your journey (of which the player has their own favorite Zen Masters).

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The biggest flaw of a Final Fantasy game is the fact that it's a Final Fantasy game.

When talking about Choose Your Own Adventure mechanics in video games, it's not a discussion without mentioning Japanese visual novels. I like how in love adventures, my choices not only affect which girl I pursue but how well the relationship plays out. I enjoy teasing tsunderes a little too much sometimes. That's where the best dialogue is (I think) and a well written bad ending is more interesting to me than a "good" ending. Heck, the credits music that plays after a bad ending in Hourglass of Summer is better than the good ending music. Of course, you have games where the choices are all no-brainers but there are other games where they aren't. Phantom of Inferno didn't have that many choices, but all were meaningful.

There's also games like Persona 3 or 4 where you have some choice in how you structure main's daily/school life. Of course, if you want to make him an idiot slacker jerk, much of the game's cool stuff gets closed out to you, so you're more-or-less steered into making him a Marty Sue.

I think Fading Hearts (an indie visual novel by Sakura River, which I reviewed for the site) is a good one for this discussion. It's a visual novel, a life sim, and an RPG. I've played that game 5-7 times to completion and it's been a different experience every time because of all the available choices I made. I still haven't uncovered all the storylines and their requisite secrets yet. I think my review explains it all.

I like the idea of choice with some linearity. I like a compelling narrative/storyline to follow, but don't want to feel like I'm being led by the neck to do what the game wants me to do. Like what was the point of dialogue choices in Suikoden? No matter how many times I chose one option, the game would keep hounding me till I was forced to do what it wanted me to do. No, I do not want to take Gremio with me. Stop forcing my hand!

And that's exactly the point I want to make with games that are offering 'story choice'. What visual novels do right is that they literally allow you to play the game as you wish, especially for a 'choose your girlfriend' game. You can literally create the story by your choices, and while the choices have outcomes that differ in payoff, the idea is that making those choices won't hamper gameplay in a way that you'll regret making certain choices. For example, as Dincrest mentions, sometimes even bad endings are desirable for well-written and well-made visual novels.

Also, I wanted to point out Bioware's conceit within the article, and hopefully that the article can point out one thing they can really improve their games (in addition to making their models less rigid and feel more human). Here's a company whose made the idea of 'story choice' a core mechanic of their games, and their games are marketed largely for that mechanic. But their choice mechanics are always made in such a way that, for a good number of the choices, the game will steer you towards the one right answer, whether it's because the rewards are better, or if it will allow you to score a date, or if because you want to get a quest. So even if there's six choices, if you really want to have some progression in the game, you will have to choose that one option, or else suffer the consequences. In the light of what Zeschuk has been promoting (both the JRPG interview, and the Bonus Round video), it seems rather hypocritical of him to rip on something that his own company and games have been doing all along, albeit in the guise of a different cloak.

My point is that, if you're going to give 'story choice' in the game, then at least make it either that:

- each choice will all have profound impacts on the game, but each choice should have at least roughly equal outcomes. Example of which are the visual novels above, but you can actually make a game around this concept. Especially for PS3 games, given the huge amount of storage you can put on a BD, you can literally create completely different adventures with massive branching storylines to create a game that has real, considerable depth and choice.

- the choice, while being cosmetic and will not alter the overarching story, will not punish you for choosing one choice over the other. A Suikoden example, if you may; in Suikoden II, when you retake Greenhill, you can choose between helping General Kiba attack Greenhill, or help Viktor(?) hold off reinforcement from Highland. There's no real difference story-wise, since Greenhill will fall to the Dunan Army either way; however, it allows you to pick between the two fights without thinking which fight yields better in-game items.

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The biggest flaw of a Final Fantasy game is the fact that it's a Final Fantasy game.

the player avatar will at times need to be a schizophrenic wreck in order to get the most optimal answers in all situations

While I don't necessarily agree with it from a gameplay stanpoint because I WOULD have liked to be a dick to some of the S. Links, Persona 3 actively encourages this and, being a persona game, the central theme seems to be about how much of a personalitiless, opportunistic bastard you can become if you treat other people as strictly a min/maxing thing.

Which is why it's brilliant.

Choosing between good and evil routes is also handled stupidly, usually. It's often very black-and-white, there's typically a more developed path the developers apparently favored more, and the end result is usually just a unique weapon/power for each alignment.

Also there was some other game I want to bring up but I forgot which it was. Presque vu is a bitch and a half. Some other game where you're sort of forced/coaxed into objectifying the NPCs. Help?

---edit---

Wait I'm thinking of popmatters' stupid review of Myst DS. Nevermind.

« Last Edit: March 14, 2010, 09:53:03 PM by MeshGearFox »

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o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

i like story's that tackle tough issues. unfortunately most games wimp out. for example final fantasy X briefly tackled racism but it quickly wimped out. Arc the Lad Twilight of spirits i think did a good job though.

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“Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.”

But, yeah, Yuka's storyline in Crescendo had some very emotional and downright harrowing moments, but it was not the first storyline I followed in that game. Okay, Kyoko and Ayane had some powerful elements in their storylines, Kaori's had the best conversations, and Kaho's was the most meh.

But, yeah, Yuka's storyline in Crescendo had some very emotional and downright harrowing moments, but it was not the first storyline I followed in that game. Okay, Kyoko and Ayane had some powerful elements in their storylines, Kaori's had the best conversations, and Kaho's was the most meh.

sorry i'm still suffering the effects of a lost hour of sleep >_<

ok drank some live wire and read the entire OP....

i actually like linearity in games. i tend to get lost and keep changing my mind if given to many choices,so i think the best way to go is branching paths like in games such as growlanser 2 and soul nomad.

« Last Edit: March 15, 2010, 08:44:50 PM by Alisha »

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“Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.”

Once again, Crescendo. Yes it's an eroge, but a damn freaking good one with beautiful writing. It certainly had plenty of choices and storylines that weren't afraid to go there wherever the "there" happened to be in the characters' lives.

I think developers need to use story choice in and of itself as a core game mechanic before we begin to really see a good implementation of such dynamic implements. Even as far as Bioware or Atlus takes it, they're still working around a whole other set of core mechanics, ones which only use story secondarily and tend to overstate the fluff (ie: too much descriptive text and dialogue padding things out as opposed to concise plot points which quickly detail a larger tree).

From Rob Pardo at Blizzard via Dave Sirlin:

Quote

I remember a few more things Pardo said yesterday. "Don't make players read a story." He limited quest text to 512 characters on purpose in World of Warcraft, not for a technical reason, but to make quest designers keep it to the point. He said that players should be able to get the gist of the story by only reading the objecting and actually doing the quest. The quest text can then enhance, deepen, or further explain things, but it shouldn't be necessary for understanding the basic story.

He said one place they really failed at that was Diablo 2 quests. In that game, you talk to the quest giver and they launch into 2 to 3 minutes of monologue about all this story stuff. You sit there with no form of interaction. The quest is really just "Kill Andariel" or whatever though. He said that's a fail. But he said World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King succeeded here, specifically the quest chain for become a Death Knight. (I agree, and so does basically everyone else.) In this quest chain you steal a horse that you then turn into your Dreadsteed. You get quests from Arthas himself at first, but we see how your alliances change. Just playing through it all and reading almost nothing gives you a great sense of what Death Knights are all about.

Some developers have used it well in certain instances, but it's still at the basic levels. It'll happen more as time goes on. Rob understands the mechanic from what I can gather, but they still aren't using it as a core mechanic.

Hidoshi makes a good point: if you want a game to have good ‘story choice’, you have to build the game around that mechanic. I’m really interested in playing games that can have a lot of branching storylines, where each decision can lead to a different but meaningful outcome. Well, outside of visuals novels, that is.

And now for something about linearity: dear reviewers, stop mentioning as if linearity is some sort of disease. Much like story choice, open sandbox design requires a game that is built around that mechanic in order to work. For a good number of developers, the choice to make the game linear comes from a design perspective, and the games come out better for it (the Final Fantasy series being the ur-example). Besides, when you REALLY look at the games that try to say they’re not linear, look again: beneath the cloak of open-sandbox worlds and the multitude of FedEx fetch quests, the story is still pretty much on rails.

Again, the mantra is not “what you need to have, but what you are able to do with what you’ve got”.

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The biggest flaw of a Final Fantasy game is the fact that it's a Final Fantasy game.

Linearity is a god-damned disease right now as far as JRPGs are concerned. Final Fantasy XIII is quite possibly the worst experience I've ever had with the series, from its general linearity to its narrow-world mechanics. Why even have towns if they serve no feasible function or even give me a reason to explore them? It also doesn't help that Sahz is pretty much the only likeable or believable character. Lightning is such a let-down. I was hoping she'd be dynamic and interesting. Instead, she's about as vanilla as they come. I'm all for "strong female archetype", but this is just boring.

Final Fantasy has not always had the linearity curse. I think one of the principle reasons FFVI is so damned memorable is all the extra stuff you got to do. Same with FFVII, VIII, and IX. X had some serious problems with linearity, but XIII was nice about the exploration and extra quests.

It's not the central plot which really dictates linearity or non-linearity. It's the experience while you're there. XIII offers little in the way of distraction, and I think that really waters down the experience. In the end, I want my plentiful minigames, sidequests, exploration, and open-field/overworld experiences. If games like this represent an escapist experience, they'd better let me escape on my own terms a little bit.

XIII offers little in the way of distraction, and I think that really waters down the experience. In the end, I want my plentiful minigames, sidequests, exploration, and open-field/overworld experiences. If games like this represent an escapist experience, they'd better let me escape on my own terms a little bit.

Isn't a game where there are no distractions on the side the most pure gaming experience? I'd say that an RPG laden with irrelevant side-missions and minigames is "watered down", not the other way around.

I mean, I haven't gotten to play FFXIII yet, so I can't comment on it, but in my experience I've always enjoyed games that strip off the fat much more then ones that lather it on as thick as possible. For example, I've always felt that rail shooters were inherently superior to FPS games becasue there's no question about where to go or what to do. You shoot where you are pointed at. This is one of the many reasons I will always consider Killer 7 to be near the pinnacle of the genre.